Delete

A socially critical media artwork for the public space

Our artwork »Delete« was developed for the areaway of the »New Public Library of Augsburg«. It is a massive steel stela with security glass in which a »Flip-Dot« display shows some text at first glance. The entire technical interior is visible and the single components are explained to the pedestrians.

Even though mankind invents new conservation techniques all the time knowledge is still short-lived. The ultimate weapon to fight bookworms or computer viruses is not yet built and even libraries may collapse as it was breathtakingly proved in Cologne. Our artwork »Delete« picks the question if archiving knowledge is important for the mankind.

A snap-shot of the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia serves as basis for this artwork. The unique copy of the constantly growing online knowledge is stored on a memory in the column surrounded by security glass. There are only two connections to the outside world: Visually the display shows a tiny part of the millions of words. Physically an alluring button wants to be pushed. But whoever pushes the button will notice that he has deleted one character permanently.

Will the pedestrians act responsibly with the heritage of previous generations or will they seize every opportunity to delete the stored knowledge over the next years?